Three Memories of You
by J. Riot
Summary: As Janet Fitch wrote, “ Love humiliates you; hatred cradles you.” Sephiroth thinks back on six years of loving and hating Cloud in the last moments of his life. And Cloud sets him straight.
1. Wutai

Three Memories of You

The cruelest lies are often told  
without a word.  
The kindest truths are often spoke  
and never heard.

- - Ben Folds

1. Wutai

The memory I return to most often is our time together in Wutai. You were assigned to a mission led by me because you showed promise and talent, but you seemed so nervous and uncertain. Especially around me, you were reverent and terrified. For two days you couldn't bring yourself to look me in the eye. I wanted to apologize to you, though I wasn't sure what I had done. I had cultivated a reputation, or simply surrendered to fate, and it had cost me something in the way of interpersonal relationships. What amazed me most about you was that being around you – or just watching you, because you kept your distance – made me want to step out of my skin, so that I could be normal, so that I could be your friend.

The first day we spoke was clear and beautiful, as were all of those days in Wutai when the war was over, when our mission was to rebuild and survey. I was not proud of what I had done to the town – it was the beginning of a period of self-questioning that was new for me. I had been so sure for so long that I was gifted and that I was using those gifts to change the world for the better, to preach the gospel of Shinra. But after the war was over, after I had time to stand back from my strategies and look over the damage I had caused, Hojo's nagging voice crept back into my head. I began to remember the way he had told me to trust only myself. He had worked for Shinra, too, and as a child I had assumed he meant I should be suspicious of all others, but that Shinra doctrine was still unfalable. After the war in Wutai ended, I began to understand what he had truly meant.

It was fall. The weather was still warm, but there was a persistent breeze, which swept down from the mountains and pushed dust from the rubble of destroyed buildings through the air. Things were foggy, golden and kind. That was the nature of the time when I began to question my life, and when I began to love you.

You were training with Zack and I decided to sit aside and watch. Before you noticed me there you were doing well, nearly matching his skill though he was first class and you had only recently joined SOLDIER. But when you spotted me watching you out of the corner of your eye, you startled, and he was easily able to knock your sword out of your hands. He chastised you gently – you were fond of him, and disappointed in yourself, I could see it. But when I approached you seemed to go from crestfallen and nervous to absolutely terrified. It hurt me a little, and thrilled me, too.

" That was good work," I told you, offering a smile. They didn't come easy to me – I was raised by Hojo, he of maniacal laughter rather than friendly grins.

" Cloud's doing very well," Zack offered.

" Yeah right," you had said glumly, answering him. " You knocked my weapon away – if you had been an enemy I would be dead."

" It's much different when you face an actual enemy," I told you. " Your adrenaline helps you focus, and dispenses with your nerves."

That was the first time you looked at me. You had mako eyes, of course. Like mine. They were full of worship and fear when you looked at me. I wondered why, when our eyes glowed the same way. We were not so different, even then.

" I've never faced a real enemy," you told me timidly.

" You should hope you never do," I said, and Zack looked at me with surprise. It was unlike the great Sephiroth to say such a thing. But I was changing. That change never really took root, because of things that happened soon afterwards. But the doubts were always with me. The wishing that my life was different.

" Is my skill really that terrible?" you asked, fretting aloud and misunderstanding my comment. I laughed, and put my hand on your shoulder.

" I only mean that we should all wish for peace," I said, grinning at you. Your face changed, and you let yourself return my smile. I squeezed your shoulder, and had to walk away. Things I hadn't felt for a long time were rising through me like a warm cloud, and I almost wished them away, though the feeling was a good one. You looked a bit like the president's son, who I had grown up with and had something of a crush on as a teenager. But Rufus was cold and never seemed to even want to be my friend, let alone anything more. I had pined for him, ashamed and lonely, until I finally left to serve in SOLDIER and cast away those feelings, for good, I thought. I did not want to go through that pain again, but you seemed so different from Rufus, so kind and warm.

I saw you again later that night, when the temperature dropped and the men left the camp for the town's surviving bars. It was a clear night, lit by only a tiny crescent of moon, and I decided to join my subordinates at the bar. It was something I never would have considered only a few weeks ago – I had to maintain an elevated status if I wanted to be an effective general, and drinking with the men in a bar would conflict with my superiority. All things Heidegger of Shinra had taught me in my military studies since I was eight years old. But I had never liked Heidegger, a fat and pompous man who let younger, poorer men do his fighting for him, as the rest of the Shinra leadership did. I was tired of following their rules – doing so had made me successful, but only in the ways they wanted. I was lonely. I wanted to learn how to be a human being, and that wasn't in Shinra's plans for me.

When I walked in the bar, the men spotted me and looked surprised – you not least of all. You were sitting toward the end of the bar, a bit apart from the others. It was one of the things I had noticed about you since you had come to the camp, one of the things that intrigued me about you. You reminded me of my myself in the way you seemed to be a loner who wanted to grow close to people but didn't know how. I greeted my men as I moved down the bar, and took an empty seat beside you.

" Hello," I said, smiling and sitting beside you. " What are you drinking?"

" Hot sake," you said, after a moment of stunned speechlessness. " It's cold outside," you offered in way of explanation. I had to stop myself from chuckling at the way you had your hands wrapped around the little stone jug.

" I didn't think you drank," you said.

" Sure I do," I said, though typically I didn't. I ordered a hot sake for myself, and the bartender placed a steaming jug and a matching guinomi in front of me.

" I don't drink much myself," you said, and I believed you. I asked your age, and you told me you were sixteen. I had guessed as much, but it still stung a bit to hear that I was ten years older than you. I found myself wishing that I was your age, that we could bond, overwhelmed by joining SOLDIER and naively sorry that we'd missed the war. I knew it would be harder to foster a friendship with you as your general.

We sat and talked, two inexperienced drinkers getting a little drunk and perhaps sharing more about our lives than we would have otherwise. It was hard for me to tell most people about my childhood, but yours had not been easy, either, though it wasn't quite so unusual as mine.

" Then you never met your parents?" you asked me at one point, a look of great sympathy on your face.

" No," I said. " They died when I was very young." Even then, I didn't entirely believe this. I didn't want to dive further into my past, though. I could sense its darkness, could sense, from the way Gast and the others had kept it from me, that it would only hurt me.

It was you who eventually drove me into that darkness. But that night I never would have imagined it. As you told me about your lonely childhood I felt that I had found a kindred spirit. We walked home from the bar at closing time, after all of the other men had already left, certainly jealous to find me at the end of the bar, offering my company to a teenage rookie rather than those who I had fought with.

You and I stood outside of the camp and looked at the moon. We were in the tall grass beyond the clearing, our eyes on the sky.

" In Midgar I so rarely saw the moon," I said, sobering a bit but still infused with the wistfulness that drinking brings. " I never get tired of looking at it. It's amazing."

" I can't believe I'm standing here with you," you said with a little laugh, the sake making you more candid than you had intended, I'm sure.

" What do you mean?" I asked.

" You're Sephiroth," you had said, as if it should be obvious. I looked down at you, washed in moonlight, and let myself realize how beautiful you were. If only you had known that, in that moment, the great Sephiroth worshipped you. I wanted to run a hand through that soft, blond hair, and I knew that I could. I was a general and you were a rookie – I could have taken from you whatever I wanted. But I kept my hands at my side. Hojo had told me to enjoy the burden of superiority that I carried – he had told me that those of us who were born for greatness were entitled to have what we wanted. But I could not have lifted a hand to harm you.

Not then. Then I walked you to your tent and said goodnight. Later of course, we would hurt each other. But that night I was so infatuated with your innocence that I wanted to sit outside your tent and keep guard. Of course I didn't. I went back to my own tent and laid on my cot, staring into the darkness and wondering if I wanted to fall over the edge of these feelings. As I drifted off to sleep I realized I didn't have a choice.

I didn't have the nerve to touch you for weeks, though I dreamt of it often. I was distracted in my work, though it hardly mattered, as I was overseeing an orderly disaster relief process. It was ironic, and I appreciated the irony: we were left to rebuild the town we had destroyed. Only we were rebuilding it as something that did not threaten Shinra – we were rebuilding what was now Shinra's property. I pitied the people in the village, who had to hide their resentment for us out of fear. They seemed glad the war was over, but ashamed that they had lost.

I became accustomed to taking long walks through the mountains in the evenings. I knew it wasn't an intelligent thing to do – the people in the town resented me, and though I was capable of easily defeating any rebels who aimed to assassinate me while I was walking alone, I didn't know the terrain as well as the locals and there was still a risk of getting hurt.

But I felt safe in Wutai, shrouded in my longing for you.

I personally took you under my wing and helped you train. You got better under my direction, and the skills you possessed, for such a young man, were impressive. After practicing in the wheat fields surrounding our camp we would go for hot noodles and tea together. Sometimes with Zack and the other men, sometimes just the two of us.

But of course you remember all of that.

You were so enamored of me, and I hoped that your fondness for me was in the same vein as mine for you. I was afraid that you were still simply a little boy worshipping his childhood hero, and still not seeing me as an equal, as someone you could found a deeper relationship with. I asked you if you had girlfriends, and you answered quickly that you hadn't. I let my hope grow.

Winter was coming in Wutai, and often the men would sit up at night around campfires, keeping warm by drinking tea and talking about the families they missed, the people they had left behind. Zack had a bracelet that his girl back home had given him for good luck, and he used to twirl it around while he sat talking about how beautiful she was. You and I, we had nothing like that waiting for us at home. I had only the cold Shinra headquarters and Hojo, whose interest in me was nothing like the father whose role he was irresponsibly assigned to fill. You told me you had a mother who you loved but had never felt close to, and no friends to write to, no lover waiting.

We sat apart from the other men because of this. Perhaps they whispered about us – you were too amazed at the luck that had allowed you to befriend me to notice, and I was too used to having people whisper about me to care. But it was one of those cold nights, sitting close to the fire, that I first mustered the courage to touch you. There were other men around, talking quietly. And you may not have even noticed, but I was inching slowly closer to you as we sat together on one of the broken roof beams the men had dragged over to use as benches.

As we were sitting there, talking distractedly about where we would stay when winter came, I laid my arm alongside yours. You did not stop talking, flinch or even stiffen. It was natural, or maybe so timid and small that it wasn't noticed. But I felt inflated by the gesture – you had not rejected me, had not moved away, had not clammed up in awkward response. And as my arm rested against yours I could feel the weight of your body shift – when you sighed, when you laughed, when you turned to look at me. I felt that I had found where I truly belonged at last – beside you.

I never knew for sure if you were responding positively to my advances, or simply passing them off as platonic. After all, you had told me you never had a real friend before, and you knew that I hadn't, either. Perhaps you just thought we were inventing a type of friendship for the two of us, that because we were both starting from clean slates we could make of it whatever we liked.

Sometimes, though, I think you must have known. I was always as close to you as I could be. I put my hand on your shoulder at every opportunity – you must have felt how much I wanted to pull you into my arms. You must have seen, when I looked at you, how I was imagining what it would feel like to kiss you, to smooth your hair, to bury my face against your neck.

But perhaps not. You were a child, after all.

The night after we left Wutai, however: you knew then. For that night I cannot pass you off as innocent, for that night I cannot forgive you.

Zack and I were called away to Nielbelhiem. We were asked to chose two subordinates to accompany us on a mission to investigate a reactor. They were pulling me away from the Wutai revival effort to perform a routine reactor check – I knew that something more than what Shinra would tell me was going on. It was how Shinra had treated me my whole life – as if I wasn't entitled to know the truth, was only expected to serve them blindly, like a prized purebred dog.

I almost didn't want to bring you along. I knew that if Shinra was hiding something from me there was danger involved, and the thought of you facing combat seemed entirely wrong. But they had asked us to bring our two best cadets, and of course Zack suggested you. What could I say? I had the right to override his suggestion, even without a logical reason, but part of me wanted you along. I had fallen in love with you and couldn't bear the thought of being away from you. It sounds ridiculous, but love makes us all fools. Zack and I told you and another cadet that you had been selected for the mission, and the four of us left for Nielbelhiem.

On the way to the coast that night, where we would meet our transport, we camped along the trail. All four of us were tired, and after a quick dinner we laid out our blankets and settled down to rest. My sleeping area was right next to yours, of course. Zack and the other man were quickly asleep, and you were dozing, but I was restless.

There were a plethora of reasons for what happened next. I was afraid that things would change between the two of us on a new mission. I saw you becoming friendly with Zack and I was jealous. I had been longing for your sleeping form beside mine in my cot for months, and suddenly there you were, your hands curled under your chin like the boy that you were. I watched your sleeping face, and my irrational side took over. Soundlessly, I moved my blanket closer to yours. I scooted to you until we were almost nose to nose.

The heat of my breath must have woken you. Your eyes fluttered open, the mako flecks caught the light of the moon, and I was enchanted. I expected you to gasp in surprise, but you only smiled sleepily. You might tell me now that you were half asleep, that you didn't know what you were doing. I would call you a liar. I leaned toward you and you lifted your chin to meet my kiss. I felt you wanting me; I put my arms around you and you settled into them.

I rested my chin on top of your head and breathed you in. The scent of your hair and the feeling of your breath, soft on my collarbone, nearly had me believing that I was dreaming myself. But it was real. I felt reborn, like all things were possible. I only held you for maybe ten minutes, too afraid that the others would wake and catch us. But there was a lifetime in those minutes. There was the love, the warmth, the happiness that had been denied to me.

It was the first and only time I had held or kissed someone, and when I had to let you go, to move away from you was like falling to earth – harsh and stony, a crashing loss. You were asleep, your mouth slightly open, and I watched you still, wanting to move toward you again. I told myself to wait, that we would have this again. I knew that the following night, in Nibelhiem, we would stay in an inn. Plans raced through my head.

This is the way that I want to remember you: asleep beside me, the possibility of holding you again still real. I kept that image with me – your sleeping face, your hand curled under your chin, mouth slightly open, your features relaxed.

You were mine that night. You gave yourself to me. Don't deny it now.

The betrayal that followed was conscious and complete.


	2. Nibelheim

A/N: Thanks to the person who reviewed today and reminded me which email I use as a login for this account. This story is FINISHED, but I have been unable to post because I forgot my login info! Sorry about that – here's chapter two at last!

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2. Nibelhiem

There is another way I remember you. I remember you with her. The image comes into my mind more often than it should, and my body turns to pure energy when I conjure it up. I am unfiltered rage when I remember you this way. It lets me force the pain of the memory away: the Jenova cells run rampant and I am less than an animal. I am their tool.

The morning before things fell apart, I had no hint that they would. I was scared before you woke, scared that you would feel differently in the morning about what had happened the night before, that you would pull away from me in the daylight. But when you woke you only stretched, saw me watching you shyly and smiled. It was different than the smile you usually offered me, which had been kind but still distant in it's reverence for my status and legend. This smile was simple and not guarded, not respectful. You did not consider it, it just came naturally. My heart filled – it was the confirmation I had needed. I had not made a mistake, I told myself.

We packed up our modest camp and traveled down to the coast, where the four of us got on a boat that would take us to Niebelhiem. The journey took a few hours, and you and I stood on the ship's deck for most of the ride, watching the giant vessel cut through the ocean. You seemed nervous, and I began to worry again that you might change your mind.

"I don't like the ocean," you told me when I finally asked what was wrong. You leaned into me then, as if for comfort, and I wanted to put my arms around you, but the deck was crowded with people who were already staring because they knew who I was. Instead I just left my shoulder pressed against yours as we leaned on the ship's railing.

"You've got nothing to be afraid of," I promised. I counted the minutes as we sailed after that, lusting for the time when we would check into the inn in Niebelhiem, when I would steal into your room, when we would finally be alone. As we stood together on the deck, keeping each other warm against the cool wind that blew against us over the ocean, I let myself imagine what it would be like when that moment finally came, when I dropped my clothes to the floor and slid into bed with you. I imagined the warmth of the blankets we would pull over us as the cold stung my cheeks. I dreamed of the soft, fragrant skin of your neck on my lips as the wind chapped them. I tried to imagine how all of your skin would feel against all of mine, how your hands would feel on my body, and the kinds of sated noises that would escape your lips.

Am I embarrassing you? Forgive me for not caring.

By the time we reached the port near Rocket Town I was flustered with a need for you. You stayed close to me as we boarded a train that would take us to Niebelhiem, and we sat in a private car with Zack and the other soldier. Thankfully there wasn't much talk during the ride to the mountain town – I wasn't sure if I could manage to put a sentence together; I was so hungry for you I could think of nothing else.

"You're from Niebelhiem, right Cloud?" Zack asked you at one point. You nodded, and I felt you bristle against the subject.

Zack wasn't as sensitive, and he pressed on.

"I wonder if you'll have time to visit your family while you're in town?" he said, looking to me as if I had an answer. I shrugged and looked out the window.

"I don't know," you muttered, and again I felt you move almost indiscernibly closer to me – your sleeve brushed mine, and then, discreetly, your weight rested against my arm. I bit my tongue to keep myself from smiling, though I also wondered about your discomfort with the subject. I sensed that you were less than enthusiastic about returning to your hometown.

There was a rainstorm that we drove into as we approached Niebelhiem. Zack was restless, you were carsick from the bumpy ride. You both watched in awe when I slew a mako monster that tried to attack our truck – when I came back inside, soaked from the rain, the two of you stared at me with wonder and I wished your amazement away.

When we reached the town I went immediately to the inn. It was evening and I told the three of you that we would get up early the following morning and travel up the mountain to the reactor. I gave you a meaningful glance before heading up to my room – you looked shaken by the town and still a little queasy from the ride. I didn't blame you for not being excited to be home – the place was small and glum, and it stunk of mako. I told you that you had permission to visit your family, though for some reason I hoped you wouldn't. I wanted you to myself.

I checked into my room and took a long bath. The hot water felt good after the cold boat ride and the brief battle in the rain. I was somewhat nervous about going to your room, and I took my time drying off and getting dressed. Outside a light drizzle was falling, and I lingered at the window, looking out at your hometown. I tried to imagine you there as a boy, frustrated and lonely. As I was lost in my thoughts I saw a girl running through the rain, her hands over her head. She ran into the inn, and after a few minutes I heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs. There was knocking down the hall, a door opened, and then silence. I didn't think anything of it at the time.

How foolish I would have seemed if I had come to your room even a few minutes sooner. I am thankful now for my hesitation. If my heart could not be spared, at least my dignity was.

We both know what happened next. I went down the hall, found the door of your room cracked, and pushed it open. Inside you were kissing that girl. She was sopping wet and looked like she'd been crying. You had your hands on her waist. I was frozen in the doorway, destroyed. When you saw me out of the corner of your eye you pushed her away, but it was too late.

You did not even come to my room to try and console me. I would not have let you in, would never forgive you, but the fact that you made no attempt was a sinister twist of the knife. I lay in bed, feeling dissected, understanding at last why Hojo had turned himself inhuman. There was nothing in being human. I dismissed my longings to be anything other than what I was: a machine that killed for Shinra.

But it wasn't as easy as a mental dismissal. I tried not to shed a tear over you, but I couldn't stop picturing you down the hall, shrugging me off and fucking that little nothing, that tramp, some mountain girl, some moron. You were not what I thought you were. Is there anything more cruel? I have been accused of being cruel. But the things I have done come nowhere close to what you put me through. That night I went into my cocoon. I let the Jenova cells, which I didn't even know existed yet, cradle me. They cooed in my ear. They told me that I was better off in a shell.

I made myself rock hard that night. I tore down anything that wasn't steel, wasn't stone. I burned it in the hollow pit of my heart, and the walls of my soul were black with the ashes.

I did not sleep that night.

I don't think I have slept since that night that I held you. I lost the need for it when you broke me. Losing you made me become a new organism altogether.

Hojo has been blamed. Gast has been credited. Shinra has been cursed for my conception, for producing my wrath.

But you. You were my creator. In this form, in what I have become, in the remains that stand before you – this is yours alone to claim.

But I think you knew that.

I remember that last time we spoke, before you killed me a second time. We had gone to the reactor, and as an added insult the girl you had forsaken me for was our guide up the mountain. I toyed with the idea of killing her as we climbed the ragged peaks, but was too preoccupied by putting forth a veneer of cool resolve. You walked near me and pretended to be disinterested in her. I couldn't imagine why you were even putting on this charade, but at any rate I ignored you and stayed as far away from you as I could without being too obvious. I could feel that you were hurt, and I was satisfied in the moment with the small pain I had caused you.

When we reached the reactor I selected Zack to accompany me, and left you standing guard outside with the girl. What I found inside is neither here nor there, though I can tell you that I would not have had the nerve to investigate it further had I not felt so raw and stony as I did after I saw you with the girl.

When the mission was through the last place I wanted to be was the inn, so I went to a bar. I heard the barkeep there talking about something called the Shinra mansion, and I asked him about it. He told me that Gast had once worked there, that he had been a kind man who came into the bar and treated the staff and patrons with a respect that his apprentice, the now-famous professor Hojo, had not. One thing led to another, as you can imagine, and I ended up in the Shinra mansion's library. Which is where you found me.

Admittedly I was absorbed in my research, and hardly noticed you standing in front of me at first. Zack had already come down once to try and persuade me to leave, but I had ignored him until he gave up. Perhaps he sent you because he thought, based on our previous relationship, you would have better luck.

" Sephiroth?" I still remember the pathetic tone in your voice. I was newly educated, feeling both wretched and holy, and there you were before me, a trivial former fascination, this simple, stupid, pretty boy who had caused me such unnecessary pain. I looked up at you, trying to put on my face the new hatred, the new awareness, the fact that I never wanted to look at you again. The effect was such that you took two steps backward when our eyes met.

" Traitor."

It was the first word I spoke to you after I learned the truth. You frowned, confused and hurt, and again I relished the fact that I could hurt you. I decided in that moment to make a life of hurting you – if I couldn't spend my life loving you, making you happy, comforting and protecting you, then I would accept the inverse. I would hunt your pain, I would cultivate it.

"What are you talking about?" you asked, as if you didn't know. As if I was going to humiliate myself by spelling it out for you. I would never deign to admit that your petty actions had annihilated me – instead I told you what I had learned in the basement of the Shinra mansion that day. Your feeble mind could barely get around the subject, but you kept trying to understand my posturing, trying to decipher my ravings, though there was no chance. I was upset, but it was a cover up. I was only learning things that my body had been telling me since I was a child. The real catalyst for my madness was your betrayal.

After I explained to you how I was created, who I was, where I came from, you stood across from the desk where I sat and stared at me.

" Well, that's good – right?" was your response. "We always knew you were – special."

I almost killed you, then. I walked to you, grabbed you by the throat, and lifted you off the ground, watching your face while you choked and sputtered, barely struggling because of the shock.

" Special?" I hissed. You had the nerve to recognize that I was special, and yet you preferred some hick girl you had grown up with? My hand tightened around your neck.

" Sephiroth, stop!" you had finally managed to choke out. "I'm your friend!"

I dropped you to the floor then. I knew I couldn't hurt you – only a few days before I had loved you. You sat on the floor rubbing your neck and crying, and the last human part of me baulked at the sight of it; I wanted to drop to my knees and comfort you. But I was too strong for that – instead I strode away.

" Forget it," I said, my voice even. "I'm going to see my mother."

" What do you mean?" you had said, struggling to your feet and trying to follow me. "I'm going with you," you said, surprising me. But I did not stop. I did not turn back.

" I don't need friends anymore," I told you. "Stay out of my way unless you want to get hurt."

I slammed the library door shut as I left, locking you inside. As I walked down the stone corridor I heard you beating on the door, calling for me.

" No, Sephiroth!" you screamed. "Don't leave me here!"

I smiled as I walked away. I would come back for you, I decided. I would claim you and carry you with me on the path that was beginning to form in my mind. You would be my slave, and I would be glorious: I would raze Shinra to the ground for the hubris that had created me. I would build my own tower over Midgar and rule the planet that should be mine. I would keep you in a cage and make you watch the world crumble at my feet.

When I reached the top of the stairs that led from the basement the other cadet that had come on the mission with us stepped into my path, and I put my sword through his chest. There was one satisfying groan and his young life was over; I left him lying on the floor and moved on. He was the first one – so insignificant, for the beginning of my wrath. But important because when I killed him he was you. I couldn't bring myself to kill you – even when I hated you, I still wanted you too much. So I killed that boy who wore the same uniform you did, killed him because I wanted to hurt you. It became the reason I did nearly everything: because I wanted to hurt you.

And it wasn't the last time I put my sword through another's heart to get to yours.

I burned your hometown to the ground. Villagers tried to get in my way; I killed them without a thought. I climbed Mt. Nibel in what seemed like two steps. I felt godlike and invincible, and I ripped the door between my mother and I off its hinges, threw it aside. Preparing to go in and face the terror and sad comfort of my only ally, I heard a voice below on the landing.

" You killed my father!"

It was her, that girl I found you with. She was weeping at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me with fury. I laughed with delight at the irony. She had a cheap sword in her hand, and she flew up the stairs in a blind rage, as if she could have hurt me. I laughed uproariously at the human condition: so foolish, and I was so glad that I had ascended above their pathetic emotional fumblings.

As the girl reached me I drew my sword up and slashed her evenly from her stomach to her chin, sending her bouncing lifelessly back down the stairs. When she landed there in a heap I saw you standing in the reactor's doorway, watching me with horror. I was perturbed that you had escaped from the basement of the Shinra mansion, but it was no matter, really. I was pleased with fate's talent for timing: I smiled down at you, introducing you to your cruel new god, who would take everything from you.

You screamed, you wept over her: I ignored you. I went into my mother's chamber and beheld her. She was beautiful and terrifying. Shinra had covered her tank with the bust of a human woman – insulting. I tore it away, and when I looked at Jenova's true form my head buzzed with archaic voices. The mother I never had: she praised me and coddled me, fanned the flames of my hate and built up my dreams of domination. She reclaimed me.

"Sephiroth!" you screamed, watching me with my mother. Your voice was raw: you had changed, too. I was briefly sorry that you would never be an innocent again, that you would be the inverse of innocence in my possession, but mother reminded me that humans were never innocent, always wicked and greedy.

"They've come again, mother," I whispered to her, smiling.

"You killed _my _mother!" you screamed. "You killed all of them!"

"Forgive me," I said darkly, turning to you. "I have been enlightened."

"I trusted you," you said, crying, drawing your sword. "You were my friend."

I could not respond to that; the idea that I was the one who had betrayed your trust was too infuriating. I drew my sword, walking to you. I would drag you back to my lair now, I decided. You could have been my equal, we could have reclaimed the planet together. But you had left me no choice.

"You're not the Sephiroth I knew," you croaked out, just before the steel of our blades clashed.

"You're right about that," I hissed, and swung at you. You met my blows, not easily but with skill. Trained well and personally by me, you were possibly the only one who could have held you own against me.

And you very nearly defeated me. It was my hesitation – it was the weak parts of me that I thought I had killed; they kept me from fighting with full force. Or perhaps you were just an excellent swordsman. Either way, I ended up hanging off a ledge that ran over one of the mako vats. I ended up looking up at you, he who suddenly had the upper hand. I made my face deceptively soft. I didn't think you had it in you to kill me, either.

"Help," I said, my grip slipping. I might have pulled myself up if I wanted to, but part of me wanted to see what you would do. I still sensed loyalty in you.

I sense it even now.

But that day you did not help me – instead you stamped on my fingers.

"No!" you screamed. "You killed my mother, you killed Tifa. Go to hell."

I fell. I remember watching you as I did, watching you looking down on me, broken, but thinking you had defeated me.

Sometimes I think if you had been certain that you wanted me gone I would have surrendered to the mako.

But I saw something in your face just before its burning energy engulfed me.

I saw regret.

And so I returned, transformed again. I had to give most of myself over to Jenova, and her spidery presence in my body threw its webs wider, paved my insides with black vines. I remembered little of myself when I returned.

But I remembered you.

* * *

A/N: Part III will follow soon!  



	3. The Ancient City

3. The Ancient City

The next five years were lost to me. The only part of my consciousness that survived was the part that wanted revenge on you. Even when I did return I spent much of that time in a haze. I killed president Shinra – it seemed like a logical first step. I knew that you were in the Shinra building that night, and I freed you and your friends purposefully. I was waiting, hiding in the executive office when I saw you come in to investigate the dead president.

Seeing you again was like a defibulator's shock: I snapped back to life. Crouching in the darkness, watching you examine and recognize my sword, I wanted to fly to you. I'm not sure what I would have done. Part of me still wanted to capture and possess you, but another part understood that these longings in me were my destruction in the past. Jenova instructed me to kill you. She had control over most of my actions at that point, but when it came to you, because my memories of you were still so strong, the decisions were mine alone.

That day, as you know, I stayed where I was. I watched you with your new friends – vagabonds, the idiot I had sliced in Nibelheim among them. I smirked, watching her tremble in terror at the sight of my sword, and at the thought that I might be alive. There was also a large man with a gun who bumbled about foolishly – I couldn't imagine why you would bother to associate with him, but then, your motives were always a mystery to me. There was also a creature with some Ancient blood – I recognized his species as one that Hojo had studied and experimented on.

And then there was the Ancient. I was as absorbed by her presence at first sight as you had been. I sensed the connection between the two of you immediately. I won't deny that I was jealous, but I was also ravenous for revenge, and thrilled at the way you walked close to her, the way your actions seemed to suggest your subconscious need to protect her, your desire to touch her.

It reminded me of the way I had skirted your every move, the way I had watched you and wanted you.

You loved her – it became more and more obvious as I watched the two of you together. You thought you were chasing me, but it was all a game I had orchestrated. You may be surprised, but I enjoyed watching you fall in love. Mostly because I knew that when I discovered the right moment to take it away from you the deliverance would be so sweet, so perfect. But also because of the connection I felt with the girl. I was not an Ancient; I was aware of this at that point. But she and I were two sides of the same coin, one light and one dark, and I understood that early on. Also, she was Gast's daughter, and I had grown up under the tender care of he and her mother, Ifalna, until they fled from Shinra and left me with Hojo. She was like a sister I had never known about.

And killing her was my revenge on the surrogate parents who had abandoned me, as well as my revenge on you.

I planned it obsessively. Watching from nearby, I witnessed your first kiss, the first time you made love, the way you timidly began to hope for a future together. Of course I didn't actually see any of these things, but I sensed them in you. After you kissed her you were bouncy, felt invincible, feared nothing. After the two of you made love you were sincere and felt doomed, haunted her every step and begged her to abandon the quest because it was too dangerous. But she refused to give up. She had a blind optimism that I both eschewed and admired. I fell in love with her along with you; I loved her as a hunter loves his long sought after prey. She was too perfect, too beautiful for this world, much like yourself. Killing her would be an act of respect, I told myself.

Shallow as it sounds, I also enjoyed the dejection of the girl you had kissed in Nibelheim, the girl who had shattered the world we had built together. She was obviously still in love with you, and you didn't even give her attention enough to notice – I was giddy with her private tears, with her feelings of worthlessness, with the rejection she grappled with. I toyed with the idea of manipulating her into killing the Ancient, but decided I didn't want to deprive myself of that sweet thrust of the blade. Instead I chose to ignore her as you did.

We saw each other several times in those days before I summoned Meteor. It was difficult to speak to you – much of what I said was coming from the mind of Jenova, though admittedly I preached her destruction with glee. I sensed how angry you were with me, and I loved and hated your fury. I also sensed that you wanted to forgive me. You had worked it all out after my alleged death, found out about Hojo and Gast and how I had been created. Perhaps you even realized, very belatedly, why I flew off the handle. Perhaps you felt guilty, and that was the reason you sought me. All that mattered to me was that you still cared to seek me. It proved to me that you belonged to me, then and always.

I surprised you in the Temple of the Ancients, when both you and she thought you were so close to rescuing the planet, to saving humankind from me and being free to begin your lives together. But you were so very, very far, and I sensed that the time to end her life, and yours by default, was near.

You had the Black Materia, and Jenova wanted and needed it. Through me she manipulated you into handing it to me. I added the details myself.

"There, Cloud," I cooed softly, as you placed the heavy orb in my hands. "Good boy," I said, smirking, condescending. I stroked your palm. I longed to touch your face – so beautifully pained as you tried in vain to resist my control – but Jenova was impatient to get away with the Materia, and I was her tool. I sped away, watched the Ancient reach for you as I went. Of course she forgave you. She forgave you everything. That was her nature; that was why you needed her. That was why I took her away.

We spent time together, that day I killed her, when we were both waiting for you to arrive so the show could begin. We didn't speak, but she sensed me there; I could feel her silent alarm and her steady resolve. She knelt on the altar, put her hands together, and summoned in the manner of the Ancients, something only she remembered how to do.

Jenova was screaming at me to kill her as I watched – I was blinded by red flashes of my mother's fury. But I used every bit of strength in me to fight her will, to stave it off, to wait until you arrived and found her safe, until you thought everything was alright – then I would lower the blade.

I watched you descending the crystal staircase. You didn't even hurray, allowing her time to do what she had to do. You watched her with incredible reverence, with a look that you had once reserved for me. I understood that you loved her in much the same way that you had loved me, and that you knew now that you had made a mistake with the Nibelheim strumpet. You were made only to love the two brightest stars in the universe, and you would never love again. I knew that when I took her from you.

Just before you could reach her, just when she had stood to grasp your hand, that's when I swept down. The sword pierced through her back as if it was meant to be there; the cut was even and clean, almost silent. The three of us stood on the altar for a moment, all too stunned to move or speak. When I pulled my sword from her back your cries began.

Since the mako you dropped me into let Jenova crawl entirely into my skull I had never faltered. I had remembered parts of myself as a human, I had held onto bits of free will like that which allowed me to wait until you had arrived to kill the Ancient. Jenova still held me fast, though – she made me believe her doctrine and I never doubted that what I was doing in her service was right.

But when I killed the girl you loved I almost wondered if my perfect moment of revenge had been wrong, if my satisfaction wasn't worth your pain.

That was the nature of the way you mourned for her. The surrendering madness of your cries was such that for a moment I thought the sword had pierced your abdomen, too. Of course, in a greater sense, it had.

You cradled her, spoke to her. She was already gone. You seemed to have forgotten that I stood over you, and I watched you, enjoying somewhat the pain we had caused each other that had come full circle, but also pitying you. You were only a human; without me and without the Ancient you would always be nothing, and lost. I had a mind to take you with me when I left, your screams ringing in my ears, but Jenova would not have it, and my better judgment agreed with her. I was starting to realize that in my revenge I was infusing you with the kind of rage you could use to overcome me, someday.

"All that is left is to go North."

But I stayed with you a little longer. You didn't know, of course – you wouldn't have known even if I had stood in front of your face. You were gone. I had destroyed you – you were now a shell, like me – still alive, but hollow and cold. I rejoiced. I felt connected to you again. I invaded your dreams, taunted you in your sleep. But even there you were listless, vacant.

And that is how I remember you. Since then I have been busy. I am losing the battle with Jenova for control of my body. I am beginning to know that I won't be around at all much longer. You could kill me today, or I could be absorbed completely into her will. Neither is of any consequence anymore. I am glad to be spending the last hours of my conscious life with you, even as you approach me with your weapon drawn.

So come. We are equals now. We have wrecked each other. If it was up to me I would not resist you as I could, but my mother will vanquish you if she can. If not, Meteor approaches. She is incredibly efficient when it comes to destroying worlds. She has been doing it for millions of years, after all.

Either way, we will be together in the Lifestream.

* * *

A/N: The final installment will be up soon! 


	4. Cloud's Response

4. Cloud's Response

He has told me everything. I am more worn from what I've heard from him than from the battles I've fought in this godforsaken crater. I nearly left him there for dead because of my exhaustion, but as we were leaving I could still hear him laughing at me. I turned. I had to come back alone.

I find him somewhat frail without her, but he doesn't surrender. He's standing, facing me in the closed arena that the crater makes around us. Only the two of us in the darkness, and at first I can barely make out his form, but when my eyes adjust I find him shirtless, standing up straight, uninjured and holding his masume.

The sword he used to kill her.

"Why aren't you dead?" I ask, for lack of anything better to say. I'm ragged, bleeding from the side and still breathless from the battle with him.

He laughs, of course.

"That was Jenova you killed," he tells me. "And I thank you. Now I'm free."

We stand staring at each other for a moment. We're both holding our weapons but neither of us seems willing to make the first move. He's grinning, trying to seem amused, but I can see that he's feeling desperate and bare without his "mother's" power. He thought he was telling me everything before either my death or his, but neither happened. Now we're left standing here, everything out in the open, and there seems to be no reasonable course of action.

"I thought you were going to leave me here," he says.

"I came back to finish what I started," I tell him, and I mean it. He will not leave this crater. He will not negate her sacrifice. If I ever loved her, if I have any respect for what she did, I have to kill him. And I loved her more than I thought was possible, I have so much reverence for her sacrifice that I can't hate her for abandoning me. So I will end his life with delight: for Aeris, and also for myself, for what he took from me.

But my sword is motionless in my hand.

"Why did you tell me all of that before?" I ask, though I know the answer. It was part of his absolution: it was the reason Jenova died and he didn't. He bested her with his memories of me, with the human part of him that stayed alive quietly while under her control.

"I wanted you to know that all of this was your doing," he says, a lie. What he wanted was one final performance, a cross to climb upon.

I open my mouth to tell him. I open my mouth to tell him that I knew all along that I had ruined him, and that I have carried that guilt since I was sixteen. Maybe I even mean to tell him that I was waiting for him the day that Tifa crashed into my hotel room, sobbing about how much she had missed me. I had been beside myself with shock: as a kid I had been in love with her, but she had barely given me the time of day. Not until she learned I was joining SOLDIER was she interested in befriending me, and then it seemed ingenuine, and my crush had died. When she kissed me I felt nothing, and when I looked up to see him fleeing from the room I was horrified, because I knew what he would think.

But just as I can't move my sword to destroy him, I can't open my mouth to save him, either. He doesn't deserve it. He claims to have loved me – he doesn't know what love is. Love is what I had with Aeris. I was surprised to find myself falling in love with her, so sure after my experiences with him that I wasn't interested in women. With the two of them it wouldn't have mattered, though: Sephiroth could have been a woman and Aeris a man. I would still have fallen in love with both of them: they were something more than gender, something otherworldly – a terrible power that could be used for good or evil, as their contradictory lives would show.

_Why me?_ I want to scream, staring at him as he watches me with mock amusement. Why did I have to go through the unbearable pain of loving them, and losing them both?

Because, though he stands less than ten feet away from me, I have lost him. I lost him that day in Nibelheim when I had been too frightened to tell him that I knew why he was upset, that I didn't want Tifa, that I had always wanted him. I never knew before today if I had actually kissed him that night we left Wutai, or if I had only dreamt it. I woke up in the morning with the memory of being in his arms, unsure whether I had invented or experienced it, but with no doubt that it was what I wanted.

I want to rage at him, I want to shout, to get down on my knees and sob: the truth is too terrible.

_I LOVED YOU_. I want to scream it, to broadcast it to the crumbling world through the amplifier of this crater, this wound on the planet where we find ourselves at the end of all things.

I try to invade his mind like he invaded mine when we climbed into the crater, try to put my voice in his head the way his had been in mine while we fought. I want to admit everything as he has, I want to tell him, but my loyalty to her keeps my mouth closed. No, he should suffer. He should die without knowing the truth.

The truth is that I did love him. I loved him even before I met him; I think I must have known. I felt the same way about Aeris when I met her. In many ways I was reliving all of the things I had gone through with him as I fell in love with Aeris, though she was a kinder, happier soul: one who wasn't afraid to tell me how she felt about me, wasn't afraid to show it.

He had been afraid. I was never certain how he felt about me, though I had my suspicions. Sometimes I thought he was cruel, feeding my obsession by touching my hand, squeezing my shoulder, by standing so close to me that I had to concentrate very hard on not crushing myself against his side. Often I felt like he was fond of me, but I never knew how or why. At night, alone in my tent, I would touch myself, thinking of him and feeling pathetic. All the time he had been doing the same thing, thinking of me, his wanting parallel to mine, and so close.

It was the most tragic, stupid waste that any two people had ever orchestrated. And because of his selfishness, because of his irrational tirade, it had cost innocent people their lives. He and I had done that, just by missing each other by a few seconds. If he had come to my room sooner that night it would have been Tifa who found me in another's arms and suffered heartbreak.

But Tifa is not a maniac – she would not have burnt down the town and murdered everyone in her path in response.

Sephiroth is insane. I understand that it is not his fault – like everyone else I blame Shinra, Jenova, Hojo – I even blame myself, for being a fool, for having been too dense to see that even the great general had fears, that he would not simply sweep me off my feet when he wanted to.

None of that changes the fact that he is responsible for what he has done. I've been through some terrible shit – he's put me through much of it personally – but I haven't snapped, I haven't given up. Even when he killed Aeris and every breath I took was jagged pain, I did not desert my friends. I did not desecrate her memory by letting myself quietly die, which was all I wished for after she was gone.

After suffering a far worse loss than he has, I can never forgive him for reacting the way he did to the pain I have caused him.

But still my sword is motionless.

"Have you got anything to say to me?" he asks, smirking. "After everything I've said to you, surely you must want to tell me something."

I bite my tongue. I'm on the verge of admitting everything. Admitting that even after he burned down the town, hurt all those people, seemed to have killed Tifa – even then I hesitated before letting him fall into the mako vat. Even after I had done it – for Tifa, my mother, everyone – I regretted it. He's right when he says that there was remorse on my face when I watched him fall. I wanted to take it back.

But he can't know that. He can't. His punishment won't be his death, which I will deal to him soon enough. His punishment will be dying without knowing that I wept over him, longed for him, wondered if he hadn't been worth more to me than everyone who died in Nibelheim that day. After all, they had ostracized me as a child, teased me for not having a father. And my mother – she meant well, but she had never understood me. Not like he had.

"Bring Aeris back to me," is all I can say, choking a little on the words. " Please, there has got to be some way." I nearly crumble to the ground, my sword shaking in my hands.

"I no longer have any powers beyond yours," he says, raising his hands as if to demonstrate. "And even with Jenova inside me I could not have done that."

"PLEASE!" I scream, falling to my knees now, letting my sword drop to the stone floor of the cave. "Please – you took her – there's got to be some way." I collapse into sobs, my neck exposed, my defenses down. If he wanted to kill me, he could. I'm the only person who can kill him; we both know that. If he kills me now than he's won the world for himself. Even Jenova is gone: all is his if he just gets rid of me, his only threat. But he doesn't have it in him to kill me and never has, never will.

I am not afraid of death, even so. If I died I would be with her. It's not the first time the thought has crossed my mind. Death has been the most attractive prospect for me for some time now. This attitude has allowed me to be the kind of warrior that he was when he was at his strongest: fearless.

Almost. I don't claim to know anything after the afterlife, about the Lifestream. I'm afraid that if I die dishonorably then I won't be placed on the same plateau that she ascended to in death. I'm afraid that, as he believes, I'll end up with him for eternity, roasting in the fiery pit of his love.

Or afraid that it's all bullshit and our souls die with our bodies.

"Get up," he snarls, disgust in his voice. I look up at him with my eyes overflowing. She was the only good thing in my life, and he took her from me. I try to use this to motivate me, try to stand, try to take up my sword. I don't move. He kneels before me.

"You think you know pain?" he growls, his face close to mine. "You think you know heartache? She loved you. She loved you in return. What you had was bliss. You should thank me for ending it when your love was as strong as it ever would have been."

"Bastard!" I scream, catapulting up off the cavern floor and knocking into him, pushing him over. I rear back to punch him in the face, but he easily catches my hand, stopping me.

"Real pain comes when love is unreturned," he says, holding my fist as I struggle, glaring at me. "Real pain is being given a taste of love, of acceptance, and then having it thrown in your face."

"You asshole!" I scream down at him, unable to hold it in anymore. "I _did _love you! It _killed _me – it killed me that you thought –"

I can't finish. I don't want to tell him how much it hurt to be unable to explain about Tifa, too afraid that he really was furious about everything that had been done to the Cetra, and done to him by Shinra. I didn't want to sound like a fool in case I was wrong, in case he really didn't care about me, and for my own self preservation I let him wither away.

He throws me off of him, furious. I skitter across the cave's floor and my hand finds my sword. I stand, holding it. He's behind me. I have my back turned to him, but I can hear him breathing.

"Liar," he says. His voice is uneven, but still harsh, still wicked.

"But I loved her more," I say, not looking at him. It's the truth. Aeris was my salvation. Her pure and selfless love saved me from the hell of loving him.

I feel his sword moving through the air behind me, and I turn just in time to catch the blow against mine. He's fuming, his hands are shaking as he presses against my blade with his own. I can see in his eyes – outwardly furious but internally vulnerable – that he doesn't have strength to fight me. I wonder if telling him that I did love him was more cruel than keeping it from him. Finding out that you've built your life around something that isn't true can be harder than living with the lie.

I should know.

Our battle is anticlimactic: he doesn't last long. He's blown apart by what I've said: I know he feels the real weight of my words, though my speech was stunted, and that he realizes that I'm telling the truth. The truth, which is that I loved him, and that I still want her back, that I don't want him, the one I've been left with.

My sword goes through his stomach like a hand sliding neatly into a pocket: the same way his masume cut through her. The perfect stroke, the blood pooling only after a few seconds of the steel hibernating in the skin. He looks down at his mortal wound and then up at me. He looks stunned, relieved, delivered. I pull the sword out and feel what I think is splattered blood on my face.

Then I realize I'm crying. I'm weeping, sobs racking through me the way they did when I held Aeris's lifeless body. He crumbles to the ground, and I throw my sword aside, drop to my knees and lean over him, crying against his cheeks, which are dry.

"Oh, you loved me," he says, as if he's just heard me say it, or just let himself realize it. His voice is strained, his eyes stare blindly up into the darkness of the crater.

"Sephiroth," I cry, putting one arm around his shoulders and reaching down with the other to try, fruitlessly, to slow the blood that is pouring from his wound.

_What have I done?_ Again remorse races through my body – again I don't want to kill him, but again I already have.

"Shhhh," he says, shutting his eyes against my forehead, his eyelashes brushing my skin. "The promised land," he whispers.

And then he is gone.

I'm left crying over his body – just a body, after all, not the form that a god had taken, not the alien lifeform's host. Just the body of a man I loved. A man who was more than a man, but still human. So flawed. So perfect. I lay my cheek on his chest and cover the last warmth from his skin with tears.

He is gone from the world. I feel the planet mourn with me the way it did when I lost her.

They were incredible, and wasted.

_Is there anything more cruel?_ Is there anything more cruel than being the lesser being, the one who fumbled and cost the world both of them: is there anything more cruel than having drawn the love of two of the brightest spots of light, and having snuffed them out for it?

I hear the Highwind descending above, the others coming to retrieve me. I stand over Sephiroth, covered in his blood, my sobs giving way to the hollowness that follows, to the empty place I know well, thanks to him, thanks to her, thanks to me for getting in the way of their destiny and costing them their lives.

I say nothing when I board the Highwind, after climbing a ladder dropped to me. The others say nothing as well. We fly away from the crater, leaving him there in the planet's wound.

Midgar appears in the distance. My friends gasp and murmur with fear as Meteor presses against the city. They cry when the light of Holy fades against the burning red hate that Sephiroth brought to the planet for me, because of me, to spite me and hurt me and to show me what disappointing him cost.

I watch Holy disintegrate against his power and I'm surprised – tears are again slipping from my eyes. I realize I'm watching his hate battle her love, and that she's losing. My flower girl. She was so strong, but not strong enough to know that hate was the key to prevailing over him – by hurting him I had given him the power to overcome her.

"Look!" Tifa says, drawing me out of my trance. I lift my eyes again, wipe them dry, and see something – green threads of light. They are shooting around the ship, rising from the earth below – one flies right past my ear.

And then I know. It's her. I hear her voice in my head as the green lights intertwine, as they form a net that catches Meteor, that defeats it, that holds the planet in it's merciful embrace. I hear her voice:

"Lifestream."

Everyone on the ship's deck is looking at me now, and I realize I've said it aloud. Lifestream. Aeris.

There are tears of joy, expressions of disbelief. Cid finds an old bottle of champagne below deck and my friends pass it around, dirty and tired but overjoyed, drinking and crying.

Tifa sees me standing alone and walks to me, puts her hand on my arm.

"Cloud, it's over," she says, crying, kissing my cheek. I look down at her and try to smile.

It's over. They're gone. And what have they saved – Sephiroth with his subtle resistance against Jenova and Aeris with her sacrifice? I look around the ship. I see people who are kind and true, but no light shines from their mortal forms. No brilliance, no extraordinary grace. Nothing like what I saw when I looked at him, when I held her. Just watching them walk across a room had felt like a privilege. What will the world be without them?

I have to go below deck. I use the excuse that I'm injured and need rest. Both are true, but I can't sleep when I put my head to the pillow on my cot.

I want to be happy, relived like the others. I feel cursed for having known them – Sephiroth and Aeris, they took the ability for me to be happy with them when they left me.

And yet I would give none of it back. None of it. Even if I had not lost Sephiroth, I would not have found her.

I roll over on the cot, this thought having given me hope. When I lost him I thought my life was over. For five years I wandered in a daze, lost until she came.

I never anticipated her existence. I never thought I would love again. And certainly I am as sure now as I was then: it couldn't happen.

Which means, of course, that it could.

I drift to sleep, and in my dreams they are waiting. They sit on a block of cracked pavement that floats through the sky – no Promised Land, just the two of them on this unceremonious altar, he standing with his arms crossed, she sitting with her legs over the edge, looking down onto the world that floats by below.

"What do you miss most?" he asks her in the dream.

After a pause, she answers:

"Him."

He nods. And they float away, through my mind, the Lifestream, through the history of my heart: not lost, but waiting.


End file.
